Days #40: Couchsurfers visit

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The family I am staying with, unusually for Russians, are enthusiastic couchsurfers. It is typical to meet Russians who have never left Russia, or who have maybe been to Europe once or twice in their lives only (or sometimes Thailand, which is also very popular), and when they do go away, it is usually to stay with family overseas or on package tours rather than as independent travelers.

Naturally, as couchsurfers themselves, my famiy often have couchsurfers to stay at their home. This week two people stayed on separate nights. By coincidence, they both happened to be Spanish guys couchsurfing their way along the Trans-Siberian from Europe to China. One was travelling because the economic crash in Spain had seen him lose his restaurant, and was planning to move to Portugal after he returned for a new start (when I told the second Spanish couchsurfer this he laughed and said he didn't think things were any better there). The second guy was younger and just about to start studying, but no more positive about the future in Spain - he is going to study languages in the hope of moving elsewhere. He had spent the previous night sleeping rough because him and his ex-girlfriend, with whom he was supposed to be staying, had a row and she had thrown him out in the middle of the night. Both me and my family wondered how he had not got hypothermia, which led them to tell me a story of an Israeli couchsurfer who had stayed with them once in the middle of winter and got lost on the way to their house without his hat. By the time he had arrived he had frostbite in one earlobe, and a few days later, part of it dropped off.

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